Jakob Nielsen News & Articles

This month we're talking about the company intranet -- its history, its culture, its future. Intranets have always been about enterprise collaboration, but now that they've evolved into platforms for enterprise social networking. The success of an intranet is not just determined by what it offers, but how employees use it. What better way to understand the tools and trends driving today's social intranet than with an original infographic?

After three years, our old friend Jakob Nielsen (news, site) returns to the topic of intranet portals and shares that the latest implementations focus on stability rather than innovation.

According to Jakob Nielsen, iPad user interfaces have improved in the past year. Yet, there is still room for further advancement.

In 2005, Jakob Nielsen shared what he considered to be the top 10 design mistakes of what was once called the ‘weblog.’ Strikingly, five years later, most (if not all) of them still remain true in the world of the engaged web.

In 2009, half of the winning intranets, as determined by Jakob Nielsen, used SharePoint, specifically the MOSS platform. SharePoint’s notable popularity is particularly interesting considering that from 2003–2006, the Nielsen’s winning intranets didn't use earlier versions of SharePoint at all.

Usability expert, Jakob Nielsen has finally reviewed the iPad and offered his perspective of the magical tablet’s usability.

Although he immediately acknowledges that “from an interaction design perspective, an iPad user interface shouldn't be a scaled-up iPhone UI,” Nielsen compares its functionality to the iPhone and talks about what focus groups are saying.

The movie Glengarry Glen Ross taught us Always Be Closing. In the world of web design, the mantra is Always Be Testing.

Yet, it’s not always clear how to go about testing your site or how to know what exactly you’re testing for. Fortunately, we’re here to provide the who, what and why of usability testing.

As long as there’s been an Internet, the discussion between user experience and usability has been explored. Although they are conceptually linked, taken separately, they highlight different elements of the human-computer interaction.

Yet in these days of advanced user interfaces, from mobile devices to e-readers to tablets, has the line between user experience and usability blurred? And if so, what does it mean for web standards and design? We examine their distinctions, roles and implications in an effort to answer these questions.

If we can trust Jakob Nielsen and his latest report studying social networking on intranets, then next year is going to be interesting.

Nielsen went straight to various companies -- from Sprint to IBM to Johnson & Johnson -- to see how they are dealing with the increasing expectation that Web 2.0 will drive Enterprise 2.0. The quick answer, they’re not.

A while back we reported about a Nielsen Online study that revealed that people are spending more time, as in actual time, reading the news online. We speculated of course as to what this indicated. Did it mean people are slow readers, or do they get preoccupied and prone to leave browser windows open? Well, according to new research, it could just mean that we’re old.

It’s not pretty, but it may be true. As we get older, online users tend to lose their savvy and what once took us seconds to process, now takes us longer. Before you despair, there are two different ways to look at this.

No matter how good you think your Web site’s design is, accept that it can always be better. Web design is no place for the content. You must forever resign yourself to the fact that your site’s usability is not going to be perfect. This is not to say your site isn’t good. In fact it may be great — but it could be better.

Or so says Jakob Nielsen in his recent article, Extreme Usability: How to Make an Already-Great Design Even Better.

You can bet that at this year’s Usability Week Conference, Jakob Nielsen and his Nielsen Group members will be discussing the results of his latest web habits report. The annual report, which summarizes the current state of using the Internet, indicated that users demand so much from the Web that they have grown impatient, ruthless and selfish.

Jakob Nielsen has released his latest Intranet Design Annual. In it he lists the 10 best Intranets for 2008, discussing why they won. While the winners are interesting to know, what’s even more important are the reasons why they won – offering best practices and guidance to companies who want to make their own Intranet better.